The Underlings

by Darrel Bird

The Underlings

  By

  Darrel Bird

  Copyright 2010 by Darrel Bird

  This ebook is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations and incidents are products of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales or events is entirely coincidental.

  The Underlings

  Crow Bait and New Shoes

  Chet Wolford was a hobo from the “gitgo.” He hit the road at 16, right after he shoved a knife through his drunken father's gut and “lit a shuck” for safer places than a rundown apartment in Hells Kitchen.

  They didn’t call them hobos anymore; now they called them homeless people. Everybody seemed big on political correctness, and some of the time he got fed off that fact, but he was a “Bo” alright, and he wasn’t fixing to get no job. He once killed another Bo for the shirt off the man’s back and left him to the buzzards, blowflies, and maggots. He found a gold chain with a cross on the body, stuck that in his pocket, and lit a fire under his rear end out of there before the cops could find him.

  Chet was 42 years old now and still had that cross. Somewhere between Denver and St. Louis he lost the gold chain. The cross was solid gold, and he had carried it all these years. Being a man of great wisdom, he was saving it as trade goods if he ever got hungry enough. He had never been to the point where he had to get rid of his insurance, but a man never knew, now did he?

  He hit the concrete rails running when a group of gang bangers chased him out of lower Manhattan. After they beat him about the head a time or two, he headed west, and that was when he entered the Chicago East Side, hungry and tired to the bone. He leaned over by the side of the four-lane to try to adjust his shoe, which had holes in them. He snagged his ragged coat on a piece of jutting steel reinforcement. The broken concrete pillar stood like a sentinel, forbidding any Bo’s to enter Chicago, and scratched his arm badly. The steel sticking out of the concrete came away victorious with a piece of Chet Wolford’s hide. The blood leaked out of the sleeve of his ragged coat and dripped on his ragged pants, but the hunger pangs did not allow him to feel the steel much, as it dug into his arm. Chet straightened up and walked on, his shoe flopping because the sole had broken in the middle, and his toes were trying their best to break free of such a disgusting situation.

  He took the first exit he could find as the four-lane seemed to him to be bereft of even road kill. It was lined with so much concrete even animals could not get to that desert of whizzing cars.

  As he made his way down a street in the rundown part of East Side, he thought of the injustice done him by the world. He was a great actor – a wonderful actor – and Cary Grant got paid, while he struggled to survive.

  He saw a rat stick its head out of an alley, and then turn and walk proudly back toward its smoldering garbage heap. Even a rat got more justice. He knew in his heart that they should have put him on stage and thrown money at him, the women worshiping at his feet. Oh the injustice and humiliation of it all… clack flop, clack flop.

  He turned a corner, and there as big as you please was a sign that read, FREE PROPHECY SEMINAR, 7:00 PM. Well sir, Chet Wolford was not a man to turn down free anything, and especially if there were a lot of people, because he was a fair pickpocket, and he might pick up enough to eat a steak in one of the diners that lined the road in that part of the country, or for that matter, any part of the country.

 

  Time for you to go to work buddy boy.

  He felt he could sure go for a steak and a cigar instead of so much road kill, because the crows got most of that, and he ended up with what was left on the bones.

  The stupid crows would just hop out of the way, and not give him the respect that he deserved for stooping to road kill. One of these days I will kill me one of them bastards and eat it raw, he fretted, as he considered the injustice of the general crow population.

  He found the free prophecy seminar in a rundown theater. There weren’t too many cars parked along the curb and that kind of put a damper on his plans to heist enough dough for a free meal. Chet Wolford was a firm believer in opportunity though, so he walked up to the ticket window, and a hag handed him the program. He walked into the theater, his shoe making a loud flapping noise until he hit the worn run of carpet; then the noise turned to a low shlop.

  There was the weirdest picture showing on the screen that Chet Wolford, opportunist debonair, had ever seen in all his 42 years of being earth-bound. The pictures were of some kind of weird-looking, angel-looking things, but weird did not even slow Chet Wolford when he was hot on a trail of suckers. He looked around for a man to sit by, or a woman who had a convenient purse he could swipe and skedaddle with, but saw none in the dim light. He took a worn seat until his eyes could adjust to the dark and the injustice of it all.

 

  Things didn’t look any too hopeful as the lights were finally turned up bright enough for him to get a look see. He was sitting at least five seats away from the suckers. That is, until he heard a fancy woman in a long dress say, “Oh, look at that poor man!” and he muttered “Bingo.”

  “Oh, let’s take him home with us and feed him Fred. That will show that Dr. Slavor, we are just as good as him.”

  “But Inez, look at him; he’s filthy!” Chet’s heart took a slide.

  “He’s just right, Fred. Now go get him,” Inez said as she shoved on his shoulder. By now Chet was looking as pitiful as he could muster, especially when he heard those words.

  “Jackpot!” he muttered, and hunched down in the seat even more until a spring sticking through the seat stabbed him in the butt and caused him to straighten involuntarily.

  Fred came over to his seat and tapped him on the shoulder, “Sir, are you hungry?”

  Old Chet put on his best Hollywood act and looked sickly up at Fred. “Yes sir, I sure am and sick too… from lack of vittles.” He was sweating, but it was from the heat in the theater.

  “Would you like to come home with us and get something to eat?”

  “Oh, would I, Sir! I would be forever grateful.” To take whatever I can get my hands on, he thought.

  “Well then, you’ll have to be baptized into the church.”

  Chet cursed under his breath; aloud he said,” Where do we have to go to do that?”

  “Oh, we have a baptismal right here. It’s a portable, and it will only take a few minutes.”

  “Do I still get something to eat?”

  “Oh, yes, we’ll take you to our house right after that.”

  “Well, I guess I can walk a little.”

  “Good; just follow me.”

  He dragged his left leg in as pitiful a gesture as he could, and followed Fred into the foyer, where stood a fiberglass bathtub-looking thing with a step leading up to the rim.

  “Good; step right up here, Sir.”

  Chet climbed the steps acting as feeble as he could; he was getting out of sorts with all this rigmarole they were putting a sick man through. He got to the top of the steps and looked at the water; he wasn’t used to water on his hide.

  “Just step right in, Sir,” said the pastor.

  So he stepped down gingerly into the waste-deep water, the pastor capped his hand over his nose, and Chet was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist church!

  “Congratulations on the baptism, Fred.”

  The pastor shook Fred’s hand, and Chet thought, I get baptized, and he gets the credit!

  “We’re going to take him home with us and give him food and clothes,” Fred announced loud enough to make sure everyone heard him. “What is your name, Sir, so that I can enter your name into the baptismal records?”

  Chet thought furiously. “Charley Reed,” he blurted.

  Fred t
ook him back to sit beside him, sopping wet, and he felt like a bedraggled rat the whole time some fool droned on about some three angels’ messages, but the only message Chet wanted to hear was chow time.

  He took a sidelong glance at the woman sitting beside Fred. She had a few wrinkles, but she didn’t look too bad in the long, black dress with the frilly white sleeves. They both looked pretty well-heeled, so he waited.

  “Ok, Mr. Reed, you can come with us now that you’re part of the church.” Fred led the way to a slick looking Pontiac parked in front of the building.

  “See you at the potluck tomorrow, Fred.”

  “See you.” Fred waved behind him as they hauled Chet out to the Pontiac.

  They weaved their way through Chicago until they came to a